1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a ballast exhaust pipe closing appliance for a ship, such as an oil tanker, a chemical tanker, etc., whereby closing temporarily an outward opening of the ballast exhaust pipe for preventing fluid, such as oil, water or the like, from leaking out of the ship through the outward opening.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, one end of a higher ballast exhaust pipe for a ship communicates with a pump room in a hull and the other end of it opens outward from the hull in its outer side plate, passing through a partition plate which divides the pump room from a fuel tank room. A shutoff valve is fixed to the ballast exhaust pipe within the pump room so that when ballast is exhausted, it can be exhausted out of the ship by opening the shutoff valve.
However, it is sometimes experienced that even while the shutoff valve is closed, fluid leaks out of the outward opening of the ballast exhaust pipe due to leaks in the shutoff valve itself caused by corrosion by seawater, leakage of fuel oil from a defective part of the ballast exhaust pipe within the fuel tank room or other trouble. Such leakage of fluid, even if small in quantity, is not allowed legally so far as it occurs in a harbor or along the coast. In order to prevent such leakage of fluid into the sea, an emergency measure such as closing temporarily an outward opening of a ballast exhaust pipe with a wooden stopper, using a bonding agent or cement if necessary, has been taken. In this case, however, depending upon the draft of a ship, the outward opening of the ballast exhaust pipe will be below the surface of the water and much time and labor will be required for putting in and removing the stopper by sending down a diver, for example. Moreover, the conventional measure has such disadvantages that it is impossible to grasp the actual state of leakage and to locate the source of leakage.